Family Matters

Chris Richards serves on the leadership team of Town Centre Church, part of Basingstoke Community Churches. She talks about ‘Family Matters’ which she started in 2005.

Out of a concern for the challenges facing today’s families and for those experiencing family breakdown, several of us have got together to pray about how we can encourage and equip people both inside and outside the church. We aim to hold two or three events a year.

So far we’ve held:

• a parenting course for Christian parents (‘Parenting God's Way’)
• an evening on parenting teens
• a four-session step-parenting course, centred around a three-course meal, with Care for the Family’s Christine Tufnell as an ‘after dinner speaker’. We felt that many of these parents have a demanding time and wanted them to have a good night out and to be spoiled a little, as well as address the subject. They were encouraged to hear from someone who had ‘been there’ and to be able to talk about their situation.
• an evening ‘Kids and the Internet’. We're at an exciting crossroads as we're about to go into a local school with this event, so we're ‘exporting’ for the first time (as opposed to inviting people in). We’ve been waiting for the right time to make our events more for those outside the church and feel Kids and the Internet is the right place to start.

As well as Family Matters, there are several other outreach ministries going on in the church:

• Besom
• Street pastors
• Mums Matter (single mums and babies)
• Bouncing Beans (toddler group)
• Prison visiting – at a young offenders' prison, where they only want over-55s to help; so unusually, it's something that is specifically for older ones! The guy who leads it is over 70.
• Pregnancy crisis work - which we hope to extend, as we have now got a building we want to be a safe place for women (offering coffee, baby clothes, advice, support etc).

Last Updated 21 October 2008